Cops these days are off the chain. Yeah she done farked up big time. She should have complied with the police instead of driving off. Maybe she panicked. So the cops start firing shots as the car speeds off. That seems reckless given all the civilians about. After a short chase they get the vehicle stopped. There's no indication she's armed. She could be but she hasn't fired any shots. She gets out the car and some trigger happy sonofabiatch later she's dead.

Bad call on her part. Bad call on the police's part. It shouldn't have ended this way. I should be reading about how they have a suspect in custody. It's terrible that I've come to expect this sort of mishap when police are involved. I have no trust or faith in their ability to do their jobs.

One of the problems that police cause when they shoot unarmed women who are in the process of parking their deadly car-weapons and exiting them on foot, especially in such prominent cases, is that it gives future criminals every incentive to refuse to surrender, and to continue putting people's lives at risk by escaping at all costs.

The typical government reaction is to escalate the situation to 100% intensity every time, not out of a desire to control things or minimize risk, but out of a sense of revenge against (and dominance over) anyone who would defy them or injure one of their own.

If they reacted with such vigor every time a person was attacked, battered, injured or killed as when it's another cop, I'd assume they had a different motive. But as it is, cops clearly operate from an us-versus-the-world, tribal mentality.

Between the cop injuring himself by driving into a stationary object, the multiple cops firing at a threat ineffectively, and the group of cops killing the suspect after she had left her vehicle, this sounds like some top-notch police work.

jaytkay:Officers confirmed that a 1-year-old baby was taken from the car and is now in good condition.David Loewenberg, who witnessed the incident, said he saw an officer "hugging a child and taking that child away."

So I forget how it works. Does that make the kid grow up to be a super hero or a super villain?

Villain. Now had some ruffian killed his mom because he/she lost their job due to the shutdown, then he could have become Batman.

This country has really taken EXTREME to heart. A trespasser is now a possible terrorist. Corn chips can't just be nacho cheese anymore, they gotta be eXtreme cheese. Sports just aren't cool enough unless they happen at the EXTREME games. Bumping into someone with a car is assault with a deadly weapon.

At no point did the security detail at the whitehouse calmly approach the woman as she drove onto the property. No one asked her what she was doing before they slammed the gates behind her. One wrong move and suddenly she's not a lost tourist but a threat to the President.

We all need to chill the fark out. Learn nuance. Practice kindness. Approach with politeness.

ZoeNekros:I can't help but wonder if she just got distracted, bumped into the barricade, then panicked and drove off as armed men began to swarm... with disastrous consequences.

But yes, far too few details at this point to know.

Did you see the video? She wasn't distracted or panicking. All she needed to do was stop. She was running at the barricades and trying to either flee or run someone down.

As to her motive, who knows; (we'll never know now) but this wasn't a case of mad-dog cops run amok. Also, she ended up at the White House, and there's no way the Secret Service, in this day & age and with this President, is going to do anything but shoot first and nevermind asking questions. Whether you're a drunken fool going the wrong way or a crazed gunman, if you run the gate at the White House, you may as well figure you WILL die at that point.

So she was just an ORDINARY crazy drunk with a baby in the car trying to smash her way through the White House gate and running from cops ordering her to stop? That means we can still feel sorry for her and excoriate the cops for their overreach, and not praise them for taking down a crazed gunman/terrorist trying to kill the President?

Ramming someone's else's car is assault with a deadly weapon. Everything that happens after that is on you.

Guess who doesn't know how self defense laws work.

For the ignorant among us, yes you may respond with lethal force while a person is a threat. That is during their attack on you. Grabbing a gun and shooting them later -even if later is just 30 seconds after they stop- is illegal and defined as murder.

If the police shot her while she was attempting to ram a gate or SS guard, the shoot would have been regrettable, but justified. Instead, she was gunned down while unarmed, outside her car, when she was no more threat than a wal-mart shoplifter. Arrest her and put her in jail for as long as the law allows, fine. Gun her down? No, that's what happens in a police state or klan rally.

BigNumber12:libranoelrose: Cpl.D: Dude, are you seriously suggesting the white things on the left are the barriers? Aren't those benches? If the barriers were all the way up, that car would have stopped dead. And that didn't happen

[i.imgur.com image 510x215]

Nice, you got the capture I was trying to get, of them coming up in sequence.

Cpl.D:Ok. I guess they are the barriers. But if the one he hit was all the way up, how did he even get past it? It would've been about as high as the top of the front of his car. He wouldn't have went anywhere. I still think it came up under him.

From the video it looks like barriers were deployed on one side of the street. It looks like the cop car was attempting to pass them on the left and clipped one of the barriers.

One of the more interesting aspects of this story, as it broke, is the sheer number of video cameras doing "citizen reportage." Some of the alleged news feed was from entities that seem to have sprung up...today (I'll admit, if I got good footage of something like this, I too would be a news agency by the end of the day).

There were other videos of the barricade incident, showing the other side of the car (more mangled than the side we see in this one), but they are gone from youtube (and liveleak) now. It's a crime under investigation, you know, so we can't be watching these videos.

MechaPyx:Cops these days are off the chain. Yeah she done farked up big time. She should have complied with the police instead of driving off. Maybe she panicked. So the cops start firing shots as the car speeds off. That seems reckless given all the civilians about. After a short chase they get the vehicle stopped. There's no indication she's armed. She could be but she hasn't fired any shots. She gets out the car and some trigger happy sonofabiatch later she's dead.

Look... a lotta guys go their whole careers without getting a single opportunity to kill someone.

When the chance presents itself, you don't hesitate, you don't ask questions, you don't start wool-gathering about "credible threats." You draw your weapon and fire, or you watch that opportunity vanish in a cloud of smoke like a million dollar lottery ticket carelessly tossed into a campfire.

jaytkay:Tatterdemalian: But the real question that needs to be answered is: why does reality keep doing things that makes the left look bad?

What about this story makes the left look bad?

It is well known that the pretorian guard near the white house is entirely composed of lefty officers, and it reports directly to His Magnificence Fartbongo. Also, His Magnificence was feeling very pissy today because of the whole slimdown thing, so he personally ordered for her life to be forfeit for intruding into His personal space. Study it out.

dumbobruni:Beer cap: When the car was pinned against the bollards and surrounded by law enforcement, nobody fires a shot, not even the guy who basically had his arm inside the open window. It's only after she drives away that they opened fire. By then, they were obviously aware she had a child in the car, they just didn't give a shiat.

so the fact that she struck a secret service agent with her car doesn't mean anything then?

It means she should be arrested and charged with that crime.

The police taking potshots at the car and later shooting the woman dead (a) didn't stop the car, (b) prevented an arrest or conviction of the suspect, (c) endangered additional people including the child in the car.

From the Zimmerman threads, I learned from all of the opinionated know-it-alls that whenever someone shoots and kills an unarmed person and then claims it was in self-defense, the "law" requires there to be arrest and a trial, so that we can then find out what happened.

I also learned that you don't need to have evidence of guilt before the arrest-and-trial phase begins. It's OK for the trial to be a fact-finding exercise.

Also, the shooter is presumed to be a murderer until he can prove otherwise. He shot someone, right?

Also, it's perfectly acceptable to make your shooter walk his investigators through the scene and have him give multiple recorded statements without an attorney.

And any exculpatory statements he makes are to be given zero credence whatsoever, even if they are later corroborated independently.

So, when will the "hero" cop that shot and killed an unarmed woman as she was exiting her car be arrested and stand trial?

Phinn:Gyrfalcon: So she was just an ORDINARY crazy drunk with a baby in the car trying to smash her way through the White House gate and running from cops ordering her to stop? That means we can still feel sorry for her and excoriate the cops for their overreach, and not praise them for taking down a crazed gunman/terrorist trying to kill the President?

Yes, anyone who desecrates the sacred sod in the vicinity of His Wonderfulness and then flees at a high rate of speed, then stopped miles away when surrounded by police, may not TECHNICALLY pose a threat to His Magificence's person, but she has offended His dignity, and for that her life is forfeit.

"Forfeit". I like that. Has a nice, gentle, benign ring to it.

It's way better than "shot to shiat by 50 maniac cops and left to bleed-out in the street, twisting and writhing in agony in full view of her horrified toddler"

If you're ever in doubt that there are horrible people willing to push their political agenda at the mere whiff of a tragedy just read the beginning of this thread. Wow.

THIS!Amazing the jump to MASS SHOOTING and How do you feel about background checks now?Farkers are too predictableAnother reason we need to look at the mental illness issues and not the the bandwagon band-aids to get votes

Gyrfalcon:So she was just an ORDINARY crazy drunk with a baby in the car trying to smash her way through the White House gate and running from cops ordering her to stop? That means we can still feel sorry for her and excoriate the cops for their overreach, and not praise them for taking down a crazed gunman/terrorist trying to kill the President?

Yes, anyone who desecrates the sacred sod in the vicinity of His Wonderfulness and then flees at a high rate of speed, then stopped miles away when surrounded by police, may not TECHNICALLY pose a threat to His Magificence's person, but she has offended His dignity, and for that her life is forfeit.

Beer cap:This is a very strange one. She was an attractive woman with a small child and a good career. I really wouldn't be surprised to hear this had something to do with Obamacare or the shutdown. drugs.

I'm usually one defending the cops, but this is just weird. Not nearly enough information, but sounds like there was maybe some poor communication among the different agencies involved. Like if someone reported gunshots, but neglected to mention it wasn't the perp shooting. In general it's a really stupid idea not to stop for cops because the potential for escalation always exists. I'm just guessing, I'll shut up and wait for the followup.

The woman driving the car was unarmed, law enforcement sources said. All the shots in the incident, which began about 2:14 p.m., were fired by police trying to stop her. Police fired at the car in at least two locations, as the car drove across Washington, and around the Capitol area.

jaytkay:Officers confirmed that a 1-year-old baby was taken from the car and is now in good condition.David Loewenberg, who witnessed the incident, said he saw an officer "hugging a child and taking that child away."

So I forget how it works. Does that make the kid grow up to be a super hero or a super villain?

The kid is the mastermind. All part of a plan to get him into the police station.

Officers confirmed that a 1-year-old baby was taken from the car and is now in good condition.David Loewenberg, who witnessed the incident, said he saw an officer "hugging a child and taking that child away."

So I forget how it works. Does that make the kid grow up to be a super hero or a super villain?